GREG GIRARD--CONTACT PRESS IMAGES FOR TIME

All cities are monuments. Athens, Rome, Bangkok stand as symbols of their unique civilizations. Lisbon is a legacy of the Age of Exploration; Calcutta a tribute to colonialism. Twentieth-century Tokyo encapsulates an enduring idea: the triumph of the new over the old. And the ruins of Troy are man's most poignant footstone to war.

What then to make of Shanghai, that transcendentally idiosyncratic accretion of rickshaws, Art Deco architecture, pulp-fiction legends and skyscrapers soaring out of control on the eastern coast of China? If there's a category that encompasses Shanghai's successive trysts with destiny--and its accelerated ups and abysmal lows--it hasn't been properly defined. Shanghai, population 13 million, is currently the biggest metropolis of the world's largest and fastest growing nation. Yet it was called into being not by ancient Mandarins but by European and Chinese traders a mere 156 years ago. It grew into one of the world's leading cities in a few decades, tapping a bizarre confluence of energies: foreign robber barons, refugees from Bolshevik Russia and Nazi Germany, chaotic civil war and the disaster of World War II. China's own communist movement was born in its misery-laden lanes; much of its recent history has been stultification under Maoism.

Today, Shanghai is carving out a new identity as, perhaps, the Manhattan of 21st-century Asia, the aspiring financial and cultural center of the region. On bustling Nanjing Road, teenagers roller-skate past Jack in the Box and Haagen-Dazs outlets. Pimps far too young to recall one of Shanghai's earlier sobriquets--"The Whore of Asia"--are restoring that reputation by oozing alluring proposals from darkened doorways. Along Shanghai's famous Bund, the riverside promenade where rogues averted glances in the 1930s, mobs of tourists are snapping photos below a blimp, ethereally lit from within, advertising Sapporo beer. With their backs to the river, these visitors behold a low city sprouting skyscrapers along its entire horizon, like new teeth coming in behind the old. Turning their gazes across the muddy Huangpu River, they witness an actual miracle of urban ambition: a parallel city has risen on what was farmland and mean coolie shacks. Not content with merely stimulating or overhauling Shanghai, China is actually cloning it on the opposite riverbank.

With such thick layers of history compressed so tightly--gunboat diplomacy, Japanese occupation, communism and a late conversion to freewheeling capitalism--urban archaeologists may someday crown Shanghai the ultimate 20th-century city. (New York, by contrast, was a cosmopolitan finance center when Shanghai was but a fishing village.) To those historical currents, add a brand new blast: the meltdown of the Asian Economic Miracle. It comes just as Shanghai prepares for its grand reopening. More than 1,000 skyscrapers have sprouted since 1990, with 500 more under construction. Elevated superhighways lattice the city, and formerly timid taxi drivers have embraced speed and recklessness. The music is already loud at Club Absolute (open until 5 a.m.), Tequila Mama's and Shanghai Sally's. An airport as large as Chicago's O'Hare is scheduled to open in October 1999. The New Shanghai, in short, is ready for business.

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